Seeing as Spring is just around the corner, I thought it would be the perfect excuse to make a fresh, fruity and light pie including my all my favourite fruit - rhubarb, strawberries and peaches. I used my fail-safe shortcrust pastry recipe and cut out a total of 128 leaves!
I served the pie at a low-key dinner party and paired it with good quality vanilla ice cream.
Ingredients:
Pastry
- 315g Plain flour
- 1 Teaspoon of salt
- 90g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
- 150g vegetable shortening, chilled
- 120 ml cold water
Pie Filling
- 1 and a half packets of rhubarb (thin stem)
- 3 peaches (2 cubed, 1 sliced)
- 300g Strawberries, chopped
- Handful of halved blackberries
- 75g Light brown sugar
- 75g Granulated sugar
- 30g Corn flour
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt
- 1 Tbsp Orange juice
- 1/2 Tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp milk
Instructions:
1) Pastry: Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl, then add the cubed butter and vegetable shortening.
2) Using your hands, break up the butter and shortening mixture until it resembles pea-sized bits within the flour mix.
3) Drizzle the cold water into the flour and butter mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time. Ensure to stir with a wooden spoon after every tablespoon is added. It is important to not add any more water than you need to. Stop adding the water when the dough begins to form large clumps.
4) Transfer the pie dough onto a floured work surface. The dough should come together easily and shouldn't feel too sticky. Fold the dough into itself until the flour is fully incorporated into the fats. From this, form it into a ball. Next, divide the dough in half. Flatten each half into 1-inch thick discs.
5) Wrap each disc tightly in clingfilm and refrigerate. Ideally, this should rest for 2 hours, but I could only let mine sit in the fridge for 1 hour.
6) Pie Filling: While your pastry is chilling, stir all of your fruit together with the brown sugar, granulated sugar, cornstarch, orange juice and vanilla extract in a large bowl.
7) Preheat your oven to 200 °C.
8) On a floured work surface, roll out one of the dough discs. Turn the dough about a quarter turn after every few rolls until you have a circle large enough to cover your pie dish and more. Next, carefully place the dough into your pie dish, gently using your fingers to push the dough into place. Cut off the excess around the outside.
9) Next, roll out the second dough disk as above.
10) Using a leaf cutter of your choice (I used the largest of a 3 leaf pack from Amazon), cut out as many leaves as you can from the rolled out pastry - I used a total of 128 leaves to cover the pie.
11) Spoon the filling into your pie crust, ensuring it is all even. When you reach the top, create a spiral pattern by layering the sliced peaches.
TIP: It is important that the pie filling lies flush to the outer edge of the pie tin. This way, the leaves will sit evenly on top.
12) Brush the outer edge of the pastry base with milk. Starting on the outer edge, position the leaves so that they hang over the pie and slightly overlap each other. Before moving onto the next layer, brush half of each leaf on the previous layer with milk. Continue layering the leaves on one another until you reach the middle.
13) Lightly milk wash the top of the pie by using an egg wash brush.
14) Place the pie on top of a baking tray or pizza dish and place in the oven for 30-50 minutes, depending on how golden you want your pie.
15) Allow the pie to cool for around 20 minutes before serving so that it holds together.
This pie will last in the fridge for 3 days, but can be frozen for up to 3 months.
Serving Suggestion: Serve with cream, ice cream or custard.
